Pearl Bowser is founder and director of African Diaspora Images, a collection of historical and contemporary African American and African films and memorabilia. She is author (with Louise Spence) of Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences.

Jane Gaines is Professor of Film at Columbia University and the author of two award-winning books, Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law, and Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era.

Charles Musser is Professor of American Studies and Film Studies at Yale University. His books include The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 and Edison Motion Pictures, 1890-1900: An Annotated Filmography.

Contents

The Touring Package: Programs and Credits
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Oscar Micheaux and Race Movies of the Silent Period / Pearl Bowser, Jane Gaines, and Charles Musser

I. Overviews
1. Black Silence and the Politics of Representation / Clyde R. Taylor
2. The Notion of Treatment: Black Aesthetics and Film / based on an interview with Peter Hessli and additional contributions from Pearl Bowser, A. J. Jafa
3. From Shadows 'n Shufflin' to Spotlights and Cinema: The Lafayette Players, 1915-1932 / Sr. Francesca Thompson
4. The African-American Press and Race Movies, 1909-1929 / Charlene Regester

II. Oscar Micheaux
5. Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates: The Possibilities for Alternative Visions / Michele Wallace
6. Within Our Gates: From Race Melodrama to Opportunity Narrative / Jane Gaines
7. Oscar Micheaux's The Symbol of the Unconquered: Text and Context / Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence
8. To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul / Charles Musser
9. Black Patriarch on the Prairie: National Identity and Black Manhood in the Early Novels of Oscar Micheaux / Jayna Brown
10. Telling White Lies: Oscar Micheaux and Charles W. Chesnutt / Corey Creekmur

III. Micheaux's Contemporaries
11. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: The Flying Ace, the Norman Company, and the Micheaux Connection / Phyllis Klotman
12. Colored Players Film Corporation
An Alternative to Micheaux / Charles Musser
Lost, then Found: The Wedding Scene from The Scar of Shame (1929) / Pearl Bowser
13. Richard D. Maurice and the Maurice Film Company / Pearl Bowser and Charles Musser
14. Cinematic Foremothers: Zora Neale Hurston and Eloyce King Patrick Gist / Gloria J. Gibson

Appendix A. The Reemergence of Oscar Micheaux: A Timeline and Bibliographic Essay / J. Ronald Green
Appendix B. An Oscar Micheaux Filmography: From the Silents through His Transition to Sound (1919-1931) / Compiled by Charles Musser, Corey Creekmur, Pearl Bowser, Charlene Regester, Ron Green, and Louise Spence
Appendix C. A Colored Players Film Corporation Filmography / Compiled by Charles Musser
Appendix D. Norman Film Manufacturing Company: Production and Theatrical Release Dates for All-Black-Cast Films / Compiled by Phyllis Klotman

Notes
Bibliography / Compiled by Kristen Barnes, Jane Gaines, Fred Neumann, and Hank Okazaki
About the Contributors
Credits
Index